Because individuals with chronic pain are at least twice as likely to report suicidal behaviors or to complete suicide, it is of utmost importance to target which risk factors contribute the most to increasing suicidality.

This comprehensive review aims to provide an update on research advancements relating to the identification of potential risk factors for suicidality in individuals with chronic pain.

Supporting the results of prior reviews, we found robust evidence that chronic pain itself, regardless of type, was an important independent risk factor for suicidality.

The only sociodemographic factor found to be associated with suicidality in individuals with chronic pain was being unemployed/disabled.

All these factors are triggered when a long-time pain patient successfully maintained on opioid therapy is unilaterally, suddenly, and forcefully tapered off their pain medication,

How can they feel anything but defeat and hopelessness? How is this NOT a catastrophe?

Without pain relief, these patients know they will become a burden to their loved ones.

Having our pain relief government-mandated and impersonally denied makes it more than clear that we are not wanted in society.

I feel utterly rejected by a society that simply doesn’t care about my suffering and even insists it is not so:

Society believes that I’m not really suffering,that I only think that I’m suffering.

That used to be called a “mind-f*ck”, when someone in authority tells you how you are feeling, invalidating your own perceptions.

Now it’s calledcatastrophizing, when doctors and researchers tell us the despair we feel about our painful lives isn’t really a catastrophe, that we only think it is.

A large number of these factors are amenable to change through targeted intervention, highlighting the importance of comprehensively assessing chronic pain patients at risk for suicide, while also incorporating a suicide prevention component into chronic pain management programs.

5 thoughts on “Chronic pain and suicide risk: A comprehensive review”

Simple cure.. Let us take the medication that allowed us to participate in Our LIVES. If I’m dependent on opioid medication to achieve participation and not be a spectator a BURDON ony family, unproductive and constantly I so much pain I need help to get out of bed and get dressed every day.
So be it….opioid medication in any dose that offers at least 75% relief of pain is tolerable and allows a person to participate and not be a hindrance. Therefore depression goes away, hopelessness goes away and one is able to participate once again.
WERE NOT ADDICTS were not abusing our medications, when forced to taper common SENCE dictates that the pain will come back. Telling a person they’re hyprealdesic is another lie. REALITY IS THE PAIN THAT WAS ONCE TREATED IS COMING BACK AND AS WE AGE OUR AILMENT GOT WORSE. WHEN WILL THE DOCTORS FORCE THE GOVT OUR OF THIER PATIENTS MEDICAL NEEDS.

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